Pochtamskaya St., 9, Saint Petersburg, Russia, 190000
He was demobilized and returned to Petrograd in the days when Nicholas II abdicated. Like many people of a democratic disposition and mindset, Zoshchenko perceived this event as a hope for favorable changes in Russia. And he went to serve the Provisional Government. In a biographical note "About Myself" (September 1927), written for the "Encyclopedia" of authors and artists of the humorous magazine "Begemot," Zoshchenko described his first appointment at that time as follows:
“My most splendid position was in 1917, after the February Revolution. I was the commandant of the post and telegraph in Petrograd. I was entitled then to a horse, a carriage, and a room at the 'Astoria.' I would appear at the Main Post Office for half an hour, carelessly sign papers, and dash off in my carriage. In such a life, I met many amazing and famous people. For example, Gorky. I once met Shalyapin at Gorky’s.”
And in May 1917, he met Vera Vladimirovna Kerbits, née Martanus, who three years later became his wife. Vera Vladimirovna’s father was an officer (captain), a military topographer. She herself graduated from the Petrovskaya Gymnasium and two additional pedagogical classes. By the time she met Zoshchenko, she had experienced her first romantic love and first marriage. Their romance developed rapidly. Zoshchenko was so captivated by her that he asked himself: “What has this little woman enchanted me with?” He wrote: “I love her, for some reason I don’t want to, it’s terribly shameful even to admit to myself. I consider myself too highly selfish in life. I know that I can be seduced by the body, but I never thought that I would be conquered by an unknown charm…”
Then, in September 1917, he unexpectedly went on a business trip to Arkhangelsk, where he was an adjutant of the local militia and secretary of the regimental court (apparently connected with his previous studies at the law faculty). Returning to Petrograd from the German front, Zoshchenko was initially ready to continue his pre-military existence: the same friends, acquaintances, the same circle of communication and interests. He even got into a rather aristocratic house — that of Princess B., although he had never been among aristocrats before. But — “The February Revolution broke down class barriers.” Zoshchenko sat in the princess’s living room with an order on his frock coat — such formality was insisted upon by a legal friend who brought him to this house. And in Arkhangelsk, where he soon went, he led the same lifestyle. Local ladies actively predicted him as a suitor for the daughter of the richest fish merchant; a young widow of a naval officer, with whom their established company played poker on Tuesdays and Saturdays, gave him an unexpected date; he had excellent English suede gloves and a connection with a Frenchwoman, Mademoiselle R., who tried to take him to Paris… As for the opportunity that appeared for Zoshchenko to emigrate immediately after October from Russia to France, to Paris, such an opportunity was quite real for him. In an autobiographical comment in 1933 to "Returned Youth," he wrote: “There was a moment when I wanted to leave Arkhangelsk abroad. I was offered a place on an icebreaker. A Frenchwoman in love with me obtained a foreign passport for me at the French embassy. However, at the last moment, I changed my mind.” He managed to leave Arkhangelsk for Petrograd a few days before the city was occupied by the English, who responded with intervention to the Bolshevik coup and the arrest of the Provisional Government.
Thus, having left Petrograd under Kerensky, Zoshchenko returned here under the Bolsheviks. And instead of Paris, he found himself on a low stool in a Petrograd basement with someone’s worn boot on his knees and a rasp in his hands, trimming a just-nailed sole. This moment is described in "Before Sunrise": “I am a shoemaker. I like my work. I despise intellectual labor — it is mental picking, from which, it seems, melancholy and gloom must arise. I will not return to the past anymore. I am content with what I have.” Quite intelligentsia-like and typically Russian…
So, a nobleman and combat officer, Zoshchenko accepted the Bolshevik October. Rejecting the offer to emigrate and all his former existence, over the next three years he repeatedly changed his occupations and places of residence, which was detailed both in the story "Before Sunrise" and in a number of autobiographical articles and materials. Here is an excerpt from his final commentary to the story "Returned Youth," which speaks about this period of wandering — after he returned from Arkhangelsk to Petrograd in March 1918:
“In July 1918, I joined the border guard. At first, I served in Strelna, then in Kronstadt.
I transferred from the border guard voluntarily to the Red Army and in November 1918 went to the active army on the Narva front. In the Red Army, I was a machine gun team commander and then regimental adjutant. I am not a communist and went to the Red Army to fight against the nobility and landlords — against the environment I knew well enough. I stayed at the front for six months and was discharged from the army due to heart disease (a defect acquired after gas poisoning in the German war).
After that, I changed ten or twelve professions before reaching my current profession.
I was an agent of the Criminal Investigation Department (in Leningrad).
I was an instructor in rabbit breeding and poultry farming (in Smolensk province, the town of Krasny, the state farm Mankovo).
I was a senior policeman in Ligovo.
I learned two crafts — shoemaking and carpentry. I even worked in a shoemaking workshop on Vasilievsky Island (on the 2nd line, opposite the Academy of Arts).
My last profession before writing was office work. I was a clerk and then assistant accountant at the Petrograd military port.”
This was written in 1933.
Another reason for his “change of places” was the famine in Petrograd at that time. In the autumn of 1918, Zoshchenko went to Smolensk province, where in the town of Krasny, in the former landlord’s estate “Mankovo,” which had become a state farm, his elder sister Elena (Lelya) lived. There he worked briefly on a poultry farm, “decently passing exams for the title of poultry breeder,” as he said in "Before Sunrise." And not without irony added: “I wander among birds with books in my hands. Some breeds of birds I had only seen roasted. And now textbooks come to my aid.” Presumably, in the same way, he became an instructor in rabbit breeding at “Mankovo.” And then — there was the Red Army, the Narva front…
Thus, alongside mastering the common folk’s way of life, he also needed to enter the literary circle, to master from within the ongoing processes there, which also took about three years (and both “journeys” proceeded partly in parallel).
These already quite purposeful literary searches began after his six-month stay at the front of the civil war near Narva and Yamburg in the 1st Model Regiment of village poor, where he was a machine gun team commander, then regimental adjutant, and from where he again ended up in hospital due to heart disease.
Sources:
http://www.cityspb.ru/blog-746138/0/
Bernhard Ruben, Zoshchenko
